Everything posted by Garwoofoo

Well so far it’s on the same trajectory as TNG (2 shit seasons, then good) and probably ahead of DS9 (3 fairly uninspired seasons followed by immediate brilliance) and I’d argue even at its worst it’s been more fun, and more genuinely Star Trek, than the truly terrible Discovery.
Knowing that there’s only more season to go, just as it’s finally found its feet, seems very unfair.

So that’s Enterprise S3 done.
That was superb. Just about the most confident and consistent series of Star Trek I’ve ever seen, and an unbelievable step up after the mediocre first two seasons. It does the DS9 thing of “episodic, but also serialised” but does it better than that show ever managed: it’s more focused, it keeps barrelling along and even the episodes that initially seemed standalone usually turned out to have some kind of link to the overall plot either narratively (Carpenter Street, Impulse) or thematically (North Star, E Squared). Of the entire series, I’d say there was only one episode that’s eminently skippable - Extinction, sadly both shit and irrelevant to the wider arc - and that’s early enough in the run that it’s clearly just a script left over from the previous season.
Everything else is simply brilliant. I had my doubts initially about Enterprise turning into Star Trek: War on Terror but it’s very well done. Characters are more consistent and the enemies are interesting enough that I could have known more about them. And just when you think it’s all got a bit dark it ends up with
So well done Enterprise, you’ve finally cemented your position as a great Trek show in your own right, shame it took three years to do it. If it had come up with something like this in its first or second year, it might not have been staring down the barrel of cancellation at this point. One more season to go...

Bit rates now starting to return to normal - hurrah. About bloody time too.
https://www.pocket-lint.com/tv/news/netflix/152176-netflix-to-resume-streaming-at-full-quality-as-networks-prove-they-can-cope.amphtml

I think the problem with A Night In Sickbay is that it kind of marks the end of that great run of episodes at the start of season 2 (Carbon Creek, Minefield and Dead Stop are all great).
You've got a longish stretch of competent but uninspired episodes coming up (with one absolute howler right in the middle) before the show finds its mojo again in the run-up to the finale.

Ah, A Night in Sickbay, certainly one of the most divisive Enterprise episodes but also one of the most memorable.
It's a great Phlox episode, which redeems a lot of its faults - I think Phlox is brilliant. But the rest of it is a bit icky, especially the never-previously-mentioned tension between Archer and T'Pol, and the aforementioned Porthos puppet that basically makes the dog look dead for 90% of the episode. Doesn't it also have a couple of particularly lengthy decontamination chamber sequences? Ugh.

The Enterprise theme tune is an abomination, but I do quite like the way it gets a jaunty upbeat revamp at the start of season 3 just as the show goes all grimdark.
I like to think that this trend would have continued if the show hadn't been cancelled. So series 7 would have featured a bubblegum remix of the theme tune arranged for Casio keyboard and vuvuzela, while the show itself consisted entirely of Archer shooting Vulcans in the head.

Two-thirds of the way through Enterprise S3 now and (a) this is DS9 levels of Good Trek and (b) I am absolutely here for the intensely homoerotic love affair between Malcolm Reed and Major Hayes. The tension!

I did have a problem with auto-updates, you're right - but this Gears problem seems to be widespread and linked to a specific Windows update that came out a couple of weeks ago. I suspect you simply haven't installed that update (which is KB4550945 if you can be bothered to check). I'm sure it'll get fixed sooner rather than later and it's just unfortunate that I've decided to take a look at this at the very time it's temporarily broken.

My main problem with Game Pass is the lack of notice you get when stuff gets removed. It makes me reluctant to start playing the larger games on the service unless I'm jumping on them the day they land.
For instance I had a look at Pillars of Eternity last night - it looks great! And the controls are really good on the console version. I'd love to play that. But it's also about a hundred hours long, and it's been on GamePass for a few months already - what happens if I get halfway through it and it gets taken off with two weeks' notice?
I'd almost prefer it if you knew that everything was going to be around for, say, a year or eighteen months, then you could plan ahead a bit in terms of what to play.

PC Game Pass is regularly a bit shit. Even disregarding the app itself, which never seems to get any updates, crashes frequently and regularly fails to load images.
Pillars of Eternity apparently has "Xbox Play Anywhere" compatibility (so saves are shared between Xbox and PC) but they've managed to put two different versions on Xbox and PC Game Pass so that doesn't actually work…
Also Gears of War Ultimate Edition on Windows is currently completely broken as a recent Windows update broke the licensing. You just get an error when starting it now and it kicks you back to desktop. Been like that for a few weeks.

My PC Game Pass speeds are either superb or terrible. Never anything in between. It either maxes out my connection or limps along at a few bytes a second. I’m convinced the issues are at their end, not mine.

Struggling a bit with Saejima in the second section of Y4. Not really enjoying his combat style - ironically it's obviously a prototype for what eventually became Beast style in Y0 but without the automatic picking up of items, it's just slow and lumbering and a bit frustrating. The fight against you-know-who was painful, although now I'm unlocking some new abilities it's at least becoming more varied.
Quick question: do I get to go back and play as Akiyama again later in the game? I was happily working through his substories when I accidentally triggered the chapter end and now of course I can't go back.

That's a really good selection. The best two games I've found on the service, hands down, have been Slay the Spire and Lonely Mountains: Downhill, and it's good to see they're both present and correct on your list. Gears Tactics seems surprisingly good from what I've played of it so far, too.
Not sure about Kingdom Hearts III though, isn't it supposed to be almost incomprehensible if you haven't played every other game in the series?

Still looks as terrible as ever. Bit rates literally half what they used to be. They’re keeping the resolutions up though, presumably so they can continue charging people for “4K”.
Part of me thinks this will never go back to what it was before and this will just become the new normal.

Well. Enterprise S3 has been a bit up and down so far but Twilight (S03E08) is not only hands down the best episode of the show so far but one of my favourite bits of Trek for a long, long time. Bravo.

Over the last couple of months I've traded in my Rewards points for Game Pass Ultimate memberships - that option doesn't appear to be available any more.
What's the best option? Spending the points on Xbox Gift Cards and funding my addiction that way?

The live service stuff has pretty much stopped now - they may do a few reruns of elusive targets but other than that, they are fully engaged with making Hitman 3.
However pretty much all the stuff they've previously added, apart from the elusive targets, is still available within the game, it's not time-limited or anything, so there's an insane amount of content for anyone coming to the game new.
I think there are a few escalations and the like that were in Hitman 1 that didn't make it across to Hitman 2 but I'd still say playing everything in the Hitman 2 engine is the way to go. If nothing else it unifies your unlocks and makes the whole thing one enormous game.

It won’t pop if you’ve done it before. Even on a new save. It’s one of the internal stats they track for your gamer tag so if you’ve already clocked up that first mile then it won’t tick it again.
The Farming Simulator task takes about ten seconds if you want an easy alternative.